Gaoled molester Salazar-Jimenez in Amarillo parish to May 2002!
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WASHINGTON (CNS): -- The Catholic clergy sexual abuse saga continued in late November with new arrests, new lawsuits, new court decisions and settlement of more than 60 lawsuits.
Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston met for more than two hours with Voice of the Faithful, a now-international lay Catholic organisation formed in Boston when the clergy sex abuse scandal broke there last January. Spokesmen for the group said the cardinal agreed with two of their stated goals -- support for abuse victims and support for priests of integrity -- but questioned their third goal of "shaping structural change" in the Church. The day before, Superior Court Judge Constance Sweeney ordered the Boston Archdiocese to hand over about 11,000 internal documents dealing with 65 priests who have been abusing children sometime in the past 30 years. The archdiocese, facing some 400 sexual abuse lawsuits, was engaged simultaneously in settlement talks with their attorneys and in negotiations with archdiocesan insurance carriers. Archdiocesan spokeswoman Donna Morrissey termed "speculative and premature" a Boston Globe report saying the archdiocese was making preparations to file for Chapter 11 bank- |
ruptcy protection.
"Currently we are in mediation and we are going to continue in mediation," she said. In nearby New Hampshire, the Diocese of Manchester reached a $5.1 million settlement with 62 alleged sexual abuse victims represented by Manchester attorney Peter Hutchins. The diocese said the abuse claims involved 28 priests, two lay workers and a member of a religious order and involved alleged incidents from the 1950s to the 1980s. The previous week another New Hampshire priest, Father James Haller, 66, resigned as pastor of St. Peter Parish in Auburn and as dean of the Manchester East Deanery after acknowledging a sexual relationship with a teenage girl more than 20 years ago. A lawsuit was filed against Sacred Heart Brother Leo Labbe, principal of Bishop Guertin High School in Nashua, by a Virginia man who claims Brother Labbe sexually abused him more than 40 years ago at a school in Massachusetts. Brother Labbe denied the allegations but placed himself on administrative leave while the claim is investigated. In October the Manchester Diocese reached a $950,000 settlement with 16 alleged sexual abuse victims represented by attorney, Charles Douglas III. |
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Hutchins said he represents four clients with lawsuits still pending against the diocese.
In addition, lawsuits by 60 claimants represented by attorney Mark Abramson remained unsettled. Abramson broke off talks with the diocese in September and was preparing to bring his cases to trial. In Los Angeles authorities said that they have charged two priests with sexually assaulting minors. Carmelite Father Matthew M. Sprouffske, 75, was arrested at the Carmelite retirement home in Illinois where he had lived since his removal from active ministry last spring. He was charged with molesting a female relative, a minor, in the 1950s when he was assigned to Mount Carmel High School in Los Angeles. Former priest John A. Salazar-Jimenez, 47, who is believed to be living in Canada, was charged with sexually assaulting two boys when he was working as a parish priest in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Convicted of other child molestation crimes in California in 1988, Salazar spent three years in prison, then joined the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, where he worked until he left the priesthood last May. Earlier this year the Los Angeles district attorney's office charged two other former priests and a retired priest with multiple counts of child molestation. All three have pleaded not guilty and in late November were awaiting their preliminary hearings. The office is still investigating several other area priests and ex-priests. |
Elsewhere around the country:
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Father Jerome Leach, 52 was arrested on charges of molesting an altar boy at St. Patrick's Parish in Larkspur, California, in the late 1970s and early '80s. The San Francisco
archdiocesan priest has been suspended from all ministry since 1993 following a separate sexual abuse accusation against him.
• Six men filed sexual abuse lawsuits against three priests of the Seattle Archdiocese. With those suits, the archdiocese now faces 15 suits by 30 plaintiffs involving eight accused priests. • In Oregon, five lawsuits -- filed by a total of 15 plaintiffs, whose abuse claims cover alleged incidents ranging from 1950 to the 1970s -- accused three Benedictine priests connected with Mount Angel Abbey, a dead Benedictine and three dead diocesan priests of the Portland Archdiocese or Baker Diocese. • In Florida new sexual abuse charges were filed in Pasco County against suspended priest Robert Schaeufele, 54, who since June has been in jail in Pinellas County awaiting trial on four child sexual battery charges there. He resigned as pastor of St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Hudson last April when the first allegations against him surfaced, and he has been banned from ministry since then. Each charge against him could bring a life term in prison. • In Florida [also], a judge ruled that the statute of limitations barred a sexual abuse lawsuit filed against a Salesian priest, the Salesian order and the Vatican. |
| Women treated disgracefully ^ ^ S.N.A.P. Books Overview READINGS 6 v v Pope demanded transfers |